Benjamin Myers: ‘My comfort read? Viz’ | Roald Dahl
My earliest reading memory
I’m six years old, up a tree, reading The Travels of Magnus Pole by Jonathan Wills. No one can reach me. The post-psychedelic aesthetic and oddness of 1970s children’s books still fills me with a nostalgic glow.
My favourite book growing up
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, about a city boy who runs away to the Catskills, sparked something inside, as did Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. Both conveyed a message of independence, transgression and a reverence for the rural that’s stayed with me.
The book that changed me as a teenager
At 18 I carried England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage around all summer, while exploring every cranny of London. It became my guidebook, Bible, manifesto. With a headful of the Angry Brigade, the Slits, Rotten and co, a Travelcard and a bit of hash, I visited almost every punk-adjacent location that Savage imbues with cultural relevance.
The writer who changed my mind
By the age of nine I’d ingested everything by Judy Blume. This was in the north-east during the miner’s strike – quite a masculine climate – so I was laughed at, but I didn’t care, for in Judy’s work lay all the secrets of a mysterious faraway planet: females.
The book that made me want to be a writer
Hunger by Knut Hamsun turned my mind inside out in my early 20s. I’d read many novels about similarly impoverished, solipsistic half-mad young men – Fante, Genet – but Hunger was something else entirely: early European modernism. Hamsun said it was his attempt to describe “the whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow”.
The book or author I came back to
I found the poetry of Thomas Hardy to be dismal and the prose of DH Lawrence to be overwrought – all those exclamation marks. Expressing this was probably the reason I failed A-level English. But I now recognise both as visionaries who saw far beyond the England they occupied. I particularly admire Lawrence’s novellas, The Fox and The Virgin and the Gypsy.
The book I reread
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, because it’s near-perfect, and Ask Dr Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller because it contains dirt, humour and wisdom.
The book I could never read again
I read the masterful Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn twice. Then I was asked to write a new foreword but had to construct it from memory. It’s the best British true crime account, but I couldn’t step into the world of Fred and Rose West a third time. There’s also a Booker-longlisted title that was so bad I still get angry when I think about it. Writerly loyalty forbids me from naming it.
The book I discovered later in life
Not being a fan of fantasy, I had never read Alan Garner until I was in my 30s – Thursbitch was the first. I knew so little about Garner that I once thought I was talking to him at a literary ceremony, but the guy turned out to be a dentist. He still signed my book though.
The book I am currently reading
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan is a reminder that brevity is perhaps the most valuable currency in literature right now; she chisels the life of a horse trainer down into prose that’s succinct, beautiful and absolute, like a diamond.
My comfort read
Whenever I am overcome with existential dread I, like many others, reach for the PG Wodehouse – currently about thrice daily. I only have to think of the title Eggs, Beans and Crumpets and I laugh. Or Viz comic, which is the vocabulary of my childhood.
My earliest reading memory
I’m six years old, up a tree, reading The Travels of Magnus Pole by Jonathan Wills. No one can reach me. The post-psychedelic aesthetic and oddness of 1970s children’s books still fills me with a nostalgic glow.
My favourite book growing up
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, about a city boy who runs away to the Catskills, sparked something inside, as did Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. Both conveyed a message of independence, transgression and a reverence for the rural that’s stayed with me.
The book that changed me as a teenager
At 18 I carried England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage around all summer, while exploring every cranny of London. It became my guidebook, Bible, manifesto. With a headful of the Angry Brigade, the Slits, Rotten and co, a Travelcard and a bit of hash, I visited almost every punk-adjacent location that Savage imbues with cultural relevance.
The writer who changed my mind
By the age of nine I’d ingested everything by Judy Blume. This was in the north-east during the miner’s strike – quite a masculine climate – so I was laughed at, but I didn’t care, for in Judy’s work lay all the secrets of a mysterious faraway planet: females.
The book that made me want to be a writer
Hunger by Knut Hamsun turned my mind inside out in my early 20s. I’d read many novels about similarly impoverished, solipsistic half-mad young men – Fante, Genet – but Hunger was something else entirely: early European modernism. Hamsun said it was his attempt to describe “the whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow”.
The book or author I came back to
I found the poetry of Thomas Hardy to be dismal and the prose of DH Lawrence to be overwrought – all those exclamation marks. Expressing this was probably the reason I failed A-level English. But I now recognise both as visionaries who saw far beyond the England they occupied. I particularly admire Lawrence’s novellas, The Fox and The Virgin and the Gypsy.
The book I reread
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, because it’s near-perfect, and Ask Dr Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller because it contains dirt, humour and wisdom.
The book I could never read again
I read the masterful Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn twice. Then I was asked to write a new foreword but had to construct it from memory. It’s the best British true crime account, but I couldn’t step into the world of Fred and Rose West a third time. There’s also a Booker-longlisted title that was so bad I still get angry when I think about it. Writerly loyalty forbids me from naming it.
The book I discovered later in life
Not being a fan of fantasy, I had never read Alan Garner until I was in my 30s – Thursbitch was the first. I knew so little about Garner that I once thought I was talking to him at a literary ceremony, but the guy turned out to be a dentist. He still signed my book though.
The book I am currently reading
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan is a reminder that brevity is perhaps the most valuable currency in literature right now; she chisels the life of a horse trainer down into prose that’s succinct, beautiful and absolute, like a diamond.
My comfort read
Whenever I am overcome with existential dread I, like many others, reach for the PG Wodehouse – currently about thrice daily. I only have to think of the title Eggs, Beans and Crumpets and I laugh. Or Viz comic, which is the vocabulary of my childhood.